


because you're mine

by stealingpotatoes



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Gen, [slaps roof of corvo] you can fit so much self doubt in this man, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27125716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stealingpotatoes/pseuds/stealingpotatoes
Summary: In a quiet moment at the Hound Pits Pub, Emily asks Corvo who her father is. Corvo knows he has to tell her.
Relationships: Corvo Attano & Emily Kaldwin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	because you're mine

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a [fluffy Emily-accidentally-finds-out-about-Corvojess fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26066365) a while back, and while I LOVE that idea, I also love the idea of Corvo telling her _after_ the whole assassination thing (and I think that that might be more canon compliant, considering [this](https://dishonoredaudio.tumblr.com/post/146513154381/my-mother-always-said-shed-tell-me-who-my-father)). So yeah… here’s that!

Corvo hated waiting between missions. 

Taking Lady Boyle out at her own party was a smart idea. There would be so many other masked men there that Corvo could slip right in, remove her from play, and slip out with no worry about the guards. It’d be a nice change from having to skulk past and knock out every City watchman in order to not be seen. Though the idea of going to one of those noble parties he hated so much wasn’t as nice a change. But he could do it. He’d probably been to more than a hundred of those. He could make it through one more. 

_You’ve never been to one without Jess_ , an unwelcome voice in his mind reminded him. He pressed his lips to a thin line. He could make it through one more party, even without her. He had to do it. He had to _for_ her, to cut Burrows’ funding and get one step closer to ending his reign of tyranny. To get her justice.

But the real issue was _waiting_ . He had to _wait_ until the night of the party. It was so very soon -- only tomorrow evening -- but it felt too far away. There was too much time to think about things he didn’t want to think about, too much empty space. The waiting between missions was the worst part about them. 

He _thought_ it should have been missions themselves; pushing himself like that after six months of prison and pain should have been a bad thing. But on missions, he could distract himself from everything by focusing on the objective and nothing else. Finally not feeling useless and weak, finally feeling like he was doing something to fix things. To make up for his failure that day, and everything that had happened afterwards. 

In times like this, in between, the feelings of restless uselessness crept back in. He’d had plenty of quiet moments to think in Coldridge; he didn’t need any more. He was doing nothing to help. Nothing to get justice, nothing to get Emily back home and on her rightful throne. Right now, he was sitting on his bed in the Hound Pits and sharpening his sword. He hardly used it on missions, but maintaining his weapons and training himself was a good way to pass the time. It was the best thing he could do to try and abate the useless feeling. Preparing himself for the mission ahead, making sure he would succeed. If he did want to use his sword, he couldn’t have it being blunt or failing to open. He couldn’t leave anything to chance. 

His thoughts were interrupted by quiet and familiar footsteps coming from the stairwell. Corvo allowed himself a small smile. He knew those steps almost as well as he knew his own. 

Knowing Emily, she was trying to move as quietly as she could -- trying to copy his own near-silent footsteps. She’d spent hours trying to perfect it back home, and was always annoyed when he could still hear her small footsteps coming, and when he could still sneak up on her. 

The tread got closer and stopped where his room began. “Hi Corvo.” 

Corvo glanced behind him, pretending to have only just noticed her in the doorway, holding some paper and pens in her small hands, and smiled at her, “Hey Em.”

She smiled back. “Can I come in here and draw?” 

“Are you done with your lessons?” Corvo asked, despite knowing they would be by now. He had to remind her that her lessons were important, even if now they seemed like a silly thing to be concerned with. 

Emily dropped her shoulders dramatically, “Yes. They were _so_ boring.” She walked further into the room and plopped herself on the floor, evidently taking his question as a yes. She knew by now he would never deny her his company. 

Corvo folded his sword in one practiced motion, not wanting weapons out when Emily was in the room, and caught her interested look at the blade. Swords and fighting -- particularly _him_ fighting -- had always interested her. Certainly more than her lessons with Callista did. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find that Emily had tried to ask Piero for her own version, though Emily wasn’t going to be fighting with anything but wooden sticks for a long time. Hopefully she would never have to touch a blade, despite how much he knew she wanted to be a fighter like him. He didn’t want her to be like him. Anything like him. 

“I just had history.” Emily laid out the paper and crayons on the wooden floor in between her and Corvo’s feet. “Callista was teaching me about some of the past Emperors and Empresses and dynasties.” 

Corvo placed his sword hilt down by his side and leaned forward, “Anyone not boring?” 

Emily kept looking down at her paper, and brushed a finger over her crayons, trying to pick the right colour to start with. “Some interesting ones. Some really _not_.”

Corvo gave Emily a slight huff and a smile. 

Emily perked up and looked at Corvo, “I did learn about my grandfather, Emperor Euhorn.”

 _Did you learn he was a bit of an asshole?_ Corvo thought, but luckily didn’t say out loud. “What’d you learn about him?” 

“Um… that he was the first of the Kaldwin rulers and he became Emperor in 1803, after a regency that started in 1801,” Emily turned back to her pens and picked a blue one. She set to drawing, “A bit like me. I’ll be Empress after a regency too.” 

“Mm,” Corvo agreed, his mouth a thin line. It seemed strange to compare the two events. Then, he’d been a boy of just five, playing in the streets of Karnaca. Dunwall and everything that happened there had seemed so far away and inconsequential to him. If only he’d known. Now… now its events were practically carved onto his skin... 

Corvo shook his head slightly, not ready to let himself go down that line of thought. To distract himself, he tried to get a better look at Emily’s paper. He couldn’t quite see what Emily was drawing yet. It looked like the beginnings of a building, perhaps. He loved her drawings. He just about preferred them to the perfect portraits hung around the Tower… though he might have been a little biased. Ok, he was _definitely_ biased. 

Emily suddenly stopped drawing. She set her pen down, but didn’t look up from the floor, and she sighed in a way that made her sound a decade older than she was. “Learning about my grandfather made me think… Mother always said she would tell me about my father when I was older. But… she’s gone now and she… _can’t_ tell me,” Emily’s gaze remained blank on the floor. 

As Emily spoke, Corvo’s heart felt like it shattered into a million pieces. An uncomfortably familiar feeling now, it seemed. He could ignore how everything made _him_ feel, but any time Emily said something about it all that happened, the flood of emotions threatened to break through the dam of control he’d built. 

_She can’t tell me._ Corvo thought of the Heart, that continuous echoing beat in the back of his mind. Her voice, but not her. Emily wouldn’t be able to hear or see it anyway. Only the Void-touched could. People like him. People like the assassins. _She can’t tell me._

“Corvo, do you know who my father is?” Emily looked up from the floor finally, up at him, “Because you were always with Mother… so maybe you… _know_.”

Her question caught Corvo completely off guard. 

He had been asked that near same question -- _you’re almost always by Her Majesty’s side, you must know who the princess’ father is_ \-- many times before, by prying nobles and gossips who thought he might share the secret when his Empress wouldn’t. But he never did. He usually insisted he didn’t know, though sometimes he would simply say he was sworn to secrecy, just to annoy people with the idea that he knew something they didn’t. 

But he couldn’t lie to Emily. He couldn’t deny her this. Not now. Not when she’d lost her mother; Corvo couldn’t let her believe she was an orphan, couldn’t let her believe that the secret had died with her mother. She needed her father. She needed… she needed _Corvo_. 

_Just tell her. Tell her._

He couldn’t silence the voice in his head that was telling him that Emily deserved a better father than him. It was true; she did. She deserved a man who could openly be her father, not a lowborn Serkonan like him. She deserved someone who could have saved her mother, not the ex-Royal Protector who had failed in the worst way imaginable. 

But he was what she had. He couldn’t change that. He didn’t want to change that. He loved Emily with every fibre of his being, and she… she was his daughter. _Void,_ he could barely think the words; how was he meant to say them aloud to tell Emily? 

This was hardly how he’d imagined telling her. He’d thought it would be when she was a little older, he thought it would be in Dunwall Tower, he thought it would be him _and_ Jess telling her. Maybe he could wait. The latter was impossible, but the first two -- he could wait until they’d reclaimed Dunwall Tower and everything was as okay as it could be to tell her. Or he could tell her now. Or--

“You do know…” Emily said slowly and quietly, furrowing her brow. Corvo realised he’d hesitated too long to make the choice. She was a smart girl, she knew he knew. 

_Tell her._ “Yes… I do.” 

Emily’s brown eyes widened. Jessamine had always said Emily’s eyes were just like his own. It would have been a comfort, something nice to see in his daughter, if he hadn’t always been so stressed about someone finding out about him and Jessamine because of them. “Please tell me. Please, Corvo.”

Corvo moved his hand behind his back so Emily wouldn’t see the glow of the Mark and activated Dark Vision, glancing at the door and the room through it. Nobody was there to hear the secret. He wanted to think he could trust the Loyalists not to listen in on him -- or even trust the Loyalists full stop -- but something was off about them, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He hoped it was just his own paranoia born from Burrows’ betrayal, but he wasn’t going to let his guard down too far. 

Corvo deactivated Dark Vision, letting the world shift back to its normal colours and gave Emily a sure look, “It still has to be a secret.”

Emily sat up straighter, so very eager to learn the truth. “Yes. I promise. I promise I’ll keep it a secret.” 

Corvo nodded. Maybe there wasn’t any point in keeping it a secret anymore, but old habits died very hard, and the anxiety was still pooling in his stomach.

Emily continued to look up at him hopefully, waiting. _Say it_ . _Tell her. She needs to know._

“I-” the words didn’t want to leave his mouth. He took a quick breath in- “It’s me. I’m your father.”

“What?” Emily’s mouth was open in shock. _She was expecting someone better than you,_ Corvo thought. But then her expression spread into a grin, and the thought melted away, “Really?!”

“Really.”

“You’re actually my father?” Emily said, the grin still wide on her face. It hit Corvo that she _wanted_ it to be him. She was _happy_ that it was him. Despite everything. 

“Mm. And you’re actually my daughter,” Corvo couldn’t help stop himself from smiling as he spoke. 

Emily was up off the floor and hugging him in the blink of an eye, her arms tight around his shoulders and her face half-shoved into his coat collar. Corvo closed his arms around her small body and shut his eyes, focusing on the feel of Emily -- _his daughter_ \-- safe and sound in his arms. 

They pulled away from each other after a few seconds and Emily continued to beam up at him. Corvo didn’t think he deserved that smile, but he would easily die a hundred times over for it. 

“I _knew_ it. I knew it was you.” 

Corvo thought of all the times Emily had tried to convince him and Jess to get together, and didn’t completely think she was lying. 

“This whole time… you were...” Emily glanced down. “You’re my father,” she repeated with a grin at Corvo. 

Corvo’s chest ached with love. He couldn’t stop smiling back at her. “Yeah, I am.” _And I’m the luckiest man alive to have you as my daughter._

It almost seemed like Emily smiled _more_ after he confirmed it again.

Corvo quickly tried to look more serious, “But remember, you can’t tell the others. Including Callista.”

Emily nodded, then shut her mouth and squished her lips together to illustrate _‘my lips are sealed’_. 

Corvo gave her an affirmative half-smile. _I love you so much._

Emily glanced to the side and paused for a short second. “I know it’s a secret, but could I call you father when it’s just us?” She looked up at him with pleading eyes, “Please?” 

The ache of love in his chest grew stronger. Corvo hesitated for a moment. He nodded, not sure he could actually form words through his emotions to say yes. 

Emily grinned. “Father,” she all but whispered, trying it out. Then she went in for another surprisingly strong hug. “I love you, father.”

Corvo hoped his daughter couldn’t tell how close he was to crying. “I love you too, Emily.” 

**Author's Note:**

> hi my name is I love Emily and Corvo.  
> Thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! Bla bla I have a [tumblr](https://stealingpotatoes.tumblr.com/) where I post (mostly Dishonored) art and writing lol. Drop by if you feel so inclined (:  
> (Thanks for reading again!)


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